


the beginning

by Amikotsu



Series: Akatsuki Gift Exchange 2019 [4]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Character Death, Enemies to Friends, M/M, Not Beta Read, Not Canon Compliant, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:34:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21898249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amikotsu/pseuds/Amikotsu
Summary: He didn't need someone to tell him that he'd died, but a confirmation would have been nice. Something told him to open his eyes, and a vast green landscape stretched out before him. He was on a hill just outside of Konoha, and at the very bottom was a small pond where he and Shisui used to catch frogs.
Relationships: Deidara & Uchiha Itachi
Series: Akatsuki Gift Exchange 2019 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1575520
Comments: 6
Kudos: 49





	the beginning

**Author's Note:**

> Final gift for the Akatsuki Gift Exchange.

Gardenia. The air smelled of summer, a mixture of gardenia and jasmine flowers, his favorites. He remembered long summer nights spent on the engawa, head tilted back, eyes on the large moon and flickering stars; he remembered pointing out constellations to Sasuke, even though the boy would never remember the names. He didn't need someone to tell him that he'd died, but a confirmation would have been nice. Something told him to open his eyes, and a vast green landscape stretched out before him. He was on a hill just outside of Konoha, and at the very bottom was a small pond where he and Shisui used to catch frogs. They'd named every frog at that pond. He'd imagined an afterlife where he could be reunited with his best friend, but the boy wasn't there; and in the end, he would still be a boy, while Itachi had grown into a man. He told himself that he didn't deserve to be reunited with his best friend; he deserved to burn in hell for all eternity, or perhaps he deserved to reincarnate over and over again until he collected enough good will to earn himself a spot on a higher plane. He had never been a religious man. What the hell did he know about the afterlife. He believed that every ending brought on a new beginning. Maybe that was why he found the blonde seated there.

The overall ache he'd grown accustomed to had vanished, and he saw with a clarity he hadn't possessed in years. He could have stayed on that hill, lost amongst the high grass that tickled his calves, but he decided to take a page out of Kakashi's book -- he got lost on the road of life. The journey down was easy enough, and he didn't try to mask the sound of his footsteps in the grass. One glance down confirmed that he was wearing a yukata, as if he were a child at a summer festival. And why wasn't the afterlife one large summer festival? At one time, he'd loved them. He remembered how fast he outgrew those days; he remembered the way his parents' corpses looked. He understood why his afterlife wasn't a festival. 

Itachi didn't know what to say to him, not after what had happened in their lives. He could have been an artist until the end of his days, making money as a bomber for hire, but circumstances beyond his control had altered his life. He was young; in the end, he didn't stand a chance. He held that against Itachi for years, likely until his own death. Perhaps he still held it against Itachi.

The frogs were in the pond again, perched on lily pads, resting on partially submerged rocks. Deidara extended a stick to poke at one of them, but the frog didn't move. Itachi remembered that some of them had been stubborn, vicious things that had hopped at him as if to challenge him. Shisui had called him the frog prince for weeks. Deidara looked back at him and Itachi saw the hatred in that lone blue eye. Nothing had changed between them. Deidara wore a light grey yukata with bamboo along one side, as if he, too, were going to a festival. Itachi almost felt plain in his red yukata. He would have preferred Kisame, but he was certain the man had survived the war. And it was better that way.

"Move along," Deidara muttered, pulling back to throw the stick into the pond. The stick bounced off a lily pad and fell into the water, quickly sinking below the surface. "I said beat it, hm. Don't you understand me? Get lost!"

"I wonder why you're here," Itachi replied, catching the blonde off guard. Itachi sank down onto the grass, content to sit on his bottom, legs tucked to the side. Deidara sat crisscross, completely unconcerned with modesty. "Do you still hate me?"

"Do you have to ask? You must have died too. Ha!" Deidara burst into laughter, one hand going to his stomach in some attempt to calm himself. Sighing, Itachi let the laughter die off and settled for watching a frog hop to an adjacent lily pad. "How'd you go, hm? Piss off Tobi and he played schoolgirl until you bled out through your nose?"

"He only acted that way for you, and no, I didn't 'piss off' Tobi. I had a receiver stabbed through my chest in a fight with Uchiha Madara. There was a war and the Akatsuki lost," Itachi replied, unbothered by the frown on Deidara's face. "Kisame survived. Everyone else is dead."

"I haven't seen them here. I tried leaving, but I always end up here, back at this stupid pond, hm. I've never even been here before. Where is this place?"

"Konoha. I visited it a lot as a child. It's a good place to catch frogs." Itachi snagged one of the cattails near him and turned it around in his hand. They were stuck there, for whatever reason. No one would arrive to tell them why. If no one else had passed through, no one else was going to pass through; they had to make the best of it. "Are you going to glare at the side of my head for the rest of eternity?"

"Maybe! I can't believe I'm stuck here with you. Even Hidan would be better," Deidara muttered, the last words hissed at the pond. Itachi extended the cattail and prodded Deidara's cheek until the blonde slapped the cattail aside. "You ruined my life."

"Hm. I made a habit of ruining lives." Itachi let the cattail fall onto the grass, then he stared out at the rest of the field, the field that quickly turned into a forest. Surely they wouldn't spend the rest of eternity together. "I apologize," Itachi said, bowing his head toward the man.

"What is that supposed to do? I'm dead. You can't go back and fix things. Your apology doesn't change anything, hm. At least I killed Sasuke."

"You didn't."

"Damn it!"

Deidara refused to speak to him from mid-afternoon until well into the night. By that point, Itachi had fallen back into the grass. One arm crossed behind his head, the other at his side, he picked out constellations, as if he were naming them for Sasuke all over again. Kisame was right. Near the end, Kisame had told Itachi that Sasuke would turn out to be the death of him. It was true. Itachi had died for his younger brother, and he couldn't find it in him to regret his split-second decision to shove Sasuke out of the way. He was glad that Deidara hadn't succeeded in killing Sasuke, but he did feel some sort of way about the man suddenly becoming a suicide bomber. Deidara had a quick temper, and Sasuke had likely angered him, possibly without saying one word. When Deidara finally came around, he muttered about leaving, then he got to his feet and walked off into the forest, only to reappear at the entrance of the forest. Over and over again, he reappeared. Itachi sat up to watch the man rage, tugging at his blonde hair, tugging at the beautiful yukata. 

"Sit down, Deidara," Itachi eventually said, allowing the man to stomp back to the pond in silence. Deidara threw himself on the grass and rolled over onto his side to resume glaring at Itachi. "Why would you think blowing yourself up is a good idea? You know you spiral when you get upset. Look at what you just did."

"It was supposed to work! He cheated!" Deidara blew the grass away from his mouth, then he reached out to yank the green blades from the ground. Itachi knew not to say that shinobi didn't cheat. "So now we're just supposed to bond here, forever?"

"I'm not sure. This is a nice alternative to what I thought would be waiting for me on the other side," Itachi admitted. Deidara grunted in agreement. "We might have unfinished business."

"Wouldn't we be ghosts then, hm? Ghosts have unfinished business. Ghosts can go places. Ghosts aren't stuck around some stinky, murky pond!"

"It smells like gardenia and jasmine -- it doesn't stink -- and the water is so clear you can see the bottom of the pond."

"Marry the pond then. I want out of here," Deidara scowled, ripping more grass from the ground. He threw the blades of grass into the air and they rained down on his chest. "What if we're in a cycle, like we're going to be reincarnated?"

"Are you religious?" Itachi turned onto his side to face Deidara. 

"I once blew up a temple." Deidara grinned and turned so that Itachi could see the expression. Itachi sighed and shook his head, then he lay on his back again. "My mouths are gone," Deidara spoke again, raising his hands up so that they could see his palms. "Can't make art that way. I don't even have any clay. This is a stupid afterlife."

"Have you tried using jutsu?" 

"Yeah. It's like we don't have chakra. When I try, nothing happens, hm."

Itachi tried activating his sharingan, but nothing happened. The view remained the same, still just as breathtaking, but lacking the clarity provided by the sharingan. The moon in the sky suddenly took on a red hue and both men jerked upright. Deidara pointed to the sky, while Itachi looked over at him to see his response. One by one, the stars flickered and went out; when one star remained, the star grew in size, getting closer and closer to the pond. Deidara scooted away from the pond, scrambling away in some attempt to avoid the light, while Itachi reacted by grabbing Deidara's right ankle. Together, trapped, they watched the light swallow them, leaving nothing but cattails, lily pads, and frogs. 

Itachi opened his eyes again and found himself in his childhood room. He still had his hand curled around Deidara's ankle, though his hand and the ankle were smaller than they should have been. Deidara opened his mouth to shout at Itachi, but Itachi pressed a hand over Deidara's mouth and covered his own lips with his index finger. Itachi tried altering his chakra flow to disturb the genjutsu, but nothing happened. Wailing started in the room next to his, so he guessed that Sasuke was there. As if on cue, a bedroom door opened at the end of the hall and he heard hurried footsteps in the hallway. Itachi slowly removed his hand from over Deidara's mouth. Under the cover of his brother's wails, Itachi chose to speak.

"We're in my childhood room. This can't be a genjutsu." As if to test his theory, he activated his sharingan. His vision bled red, as if it were his first time activating his sharingan. Deidara watched his eyes change, then they both checked Deidara's palms. There were mouths there, the tongues popping out momentarily to prove that they were present. "Where are we?"

"I didn't want to go back in time!"

"Quiet."

"What am I going to say about being in your village, hm? I appeared in your bed! Are you sure this isn't genjutsu?"

Deidara scrambled out of bed and grabbed a kunai from a pouch hanging off the back of a chair. Before Itachi could stop him, Deidara stabbed himself in the thigh. To stifle the scream, Itachi covered his mouth with a hand. Breathing hard, nostrils flaring, Deidara looked between the blood on the kunai and Itachi's crimson eyes. Something had happened. Itachi longed for the pond again. Wordlessly, Itachi moved his hand from Deidara's mouth and walked over to his bedroom window. He slid open the window and moved out onto the roof. Together, they made the voyage to the Naka River, where Itachi and Shisui had used to meet all those years ago. Deidara followed along behind him, as if in a daze.

"We're in hell," Deidara decided, eyes roaming around the clearing, taking in the dropoff. He looked like he wanted to jump, so Itachi led him away from the edge. "I want to go back to that smelly pond."

"I don't think we're in hell, but I don't know anymore than you do," Itachi informed Deidara, releasing the boy's left arm. Deidara looked down at his yukata, the clothing fitting him as if it were tailored for him, then he looked at Itachi's yukata. Their feet were still damp and had stray blades of grass on them from their time at the pond. "This could be a hallucination."

"I'm not going to hallucinate spending time with you, hm."

"It could be an alternate dimension."

"An alternate what? Where is this coming from?"

"It's a long story. It could also be that we've traveled through time together."

"It would be your fault. You grabbed me."

Itachi sat down on the grass and rubbed his throbbing temples. Eventually, Deidara sank down onto the grass beside him. Neither of them knew what to say, so they let the brainstorming session end. There was no way that they could explain Deidara, let alone the ninjutsu responsible for the mouths on his hands; there was no way that they could explain Itachi's advanced sharingan and capabilities. Itachi toyed with the idea that they'd finally died and gone to the appropriate afterlife, one with a larger world, one without boundaries. But Deidara had stabbed himself, and he was still bleeding and in pain.

"I hate you," Deidara grumbled.

"I know." Itachi thought back to the pond and the idea that every ending proved a cycle for another beginning. They had nothing left to lose. "I think we should stick together, for now." Deidara looked over at him and squinted, then he eventually muttered a quick agreement. They didn't talk about their problems anymore. Together, they longed for the pond. But a new beginning awaited.

**Author's Note:**

> This was a last-minute addition to the three stories I had planned, since I panicked about the ItaKisa pairing. It can stand on its own, or it can be seen as a bonus. It was a lot of fun writing.🤷


End file.
